


Charming

by TanteiKID13



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Riku and Sora Did Not Grow Up Together, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Happy Ending, M/M, Sora Is a Ray of Sunshine (Kingdom Hearts)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22933273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TanteiKID13/pseuds/TanteiKID13
Summary: He thinks about his soulmate a lot, how far they must be for the charm to be so cold. It hasn’t changed in temperature at all in any of his memories. They must be so far that the little shifts in movement throughout their day don’t make any difference.Maybe his soulmate is an alien.In which Sora has a soulmate further than anyone he knows, and the universe is kind to those willing to try.
Relationships: Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 34
Kudos: 177





	1. Hope

He complains of his charm being cold all throughout his childhood, because it is icy on his skin. Kairi complains of the same thing. It’s part of the reason they become friends. Their class is small and it was inevitable, but they become friends first and the rest follow. 

It’s only natural that one day they think to compare, heedless of parental warnings to not mess with other’s charms.

Kairi snatches her hand back the moment it touches his charm, as if stung, and he withdraws his own.

Her charm isn’t cold at all. Not like the chill of his own.

“That’s… Sora,” she says, and she doesn’t seem to know what else to say. 

It’s the first time he has doubts about the whole thing. 

“Sora, what if they’re-?”

“No,” he says firmly.

They used to have conversations imagining what their soulmates would be like. Kairi stopped talking about soulmates at all with him after that. She was the first friend he had and the topic is a shadow on the easy-going friendship they had cultivated.

She thinks his soulmate is dead. He’s certain they’re out there somewhere.

He doesn’t talk about it with anyone though. Kairi wasn’t right, but he doesn’t think anyone else will see it like that.

He thinks about his soulmate a lot, how far they must be for the charm to be so cold. It hasn’t changed in temperature at all in any of his memories. They must be so far that the little shifts in movement throughout their day don’t make any difference.

Maybe his soulmate is an alien.

Very rarely, at night when he’s alone with his thoughts, he thinks Kairi might have been right. He always banishes the thought before it can really take root. 

No, they’re out there somewhere. They have to be.

The ship crash lands on the play island in the middle of the night, and all he can think is, ‘ _My soulmate is totally an alien,_ ’ as he scrambles out of bed. In the privacy of his own head, his hope had started dying. No one had ever actually met aliens based on what he could find, and maybe his soulmate was an alien but he wasn’t ever going to be able to meet them. 

His parents slept through the crash, which isn’t something that occurs to him until he’s at the crash site staring down at a duck and a dog that seemed just as shocked to see him as he is to see them.

His charm is still cold, which is okay, because he doesn’t think he could handle an animal being his soulmate, pilot or not. 

“What are you doing here?” the duck asks, and Sora just looks around at the crater they’re in. The ship has surprisingly made it through relatively intact, but some things definitely fell off.

“You can’t crash a spaceship and expect no one to notice,” he says, because it seems like they’re legitimately waiting for a response.

“No one did the last time,” the duck mutters. 

The implications of multiple crashes makes Sora a little hesitant, but… He doesn’t think this is the sort of thing that happens more than once.

He thinks about the stories that his parents have told him since he was little, the legends of soulmates crossing the stars to be with each other, writ large in constellations, and maybe those weren’t just fanciful stories. Maybe it was a way of telling him what to do. 

“Take me with you,” he demands and maybe he should have made it more of a request, but they have to. He has to go, he has to meet them, wherever they are.

“No,” says the duck and he crosses his wings and turns his head away. 

Sora always thought that heartbreak was more a metaphor than anything else. It doesn’t feel like it at that moment though. Something of it must show on his face because the dog looks at him and then turns to his companion.

“Donald,” he says lowly. “Maybe we should hear him out?”

“No,” Donald says again and turns his back on the dog.

“Donald,” the dog says again, but the duck just harrumphs at him. The dog looks at him. “I’m sorry.”

“Good luck with your ship,” Sora tells the dog. “And good luck with your _attitude_ ,” he tells the duck, and then he walks away.

His vision blurs even as he walks away and he’s _better_ than this. He doesn’t want to cry because some stranger shut down the only possibility he’s ever seen of meeting his soulmate. He’ll figure something else out, just like he’s been planning. He might not be the best at physics, but he’s been trying, because his destiny is in the stars. 

He goes to the top of the treehouse and he lays back, looking up at the stars. His soulmate is out there, and he might never meet them.

The stars blur together in his vision before he shuts his eyes, a meteor shower all his own. It’s a warm night. His parents are used to him sleeping on the play island.

The sunrise wakes him and he sits up to watch the sun crest over the ocean. He loves seeing the light bleed into the sand and the water, feeling the air begin to warm and seeing the islands come alive as people begin their days. The islands are beautiful, always have been.

They’ve just never been enough. 

He wonders as he climbs down from the treehouse about what his life would have been like if he hadn’t known about his soulmate. If he hadn’t heard the stories since he was a child about the perfect person for him, the person he was meant to be with, maybe he wouldn’t feel like he didn’t belong here, like he had to go somewhere else. 

Maybe he wouldn’t feel like something--someone--was missing. 

He’ll never know, but he wonders. 

The spaceship is still down on the beach. 

There’s no way of leaving the island without passing it. It crashed right next to the docks, and it’s probably a minor miracle it didn’t take the docks out in the process.

“Hey!” comes Donald’s voice as he passes the ship. “Hey, kid!”

Sora isn’t entirely sure why they would be talking to him now, but he stops.

The duck is glaring at him even as he says, “We need your help.” 

“Please,” the dog adds, because apparently he’s the one with the manners.

And Sora has never been able to deny someone help.

“What do you need?”

“One of the blocks of the ship got damaged in the crash. We need to find a replacement,” the dog explains.

Sora looks at the ship. It’s sleek and colorful and it doesn’t exactly look like any material Sora has ever seen. 

“Do you have a plan for how to find that replacement?” he asks dubiously.

“The blocks are naturally occurring,” Donald says, and Sora looks at him incredulously. “They are!”

“We find them in treasure chests,” the dog adds, like that’s a normal thing to stumble upon. 

Except…

The play island has tons of chests from when Sora used to play pirates. They’ve been left there, because Sora isn’t the only one who uses the play island and every kid loves looking for treasure.

“Well,” he says slowly, because this feels like a longshot. “I know where we can find treasure chests.”

He’s sort of shocked that there is indeed a rubbery block in the first treasure chest they open. Less shocked when Donald declares it the wrong part and pockets it anyway. He says something vague about the world warping around them, which is exactly the sort of thing Sora would love him to elaborate on, so of course he doesn’t. 

They end up looking through five more chests with two more wrong parts, one map of the island that Sora vaguely recognizes as his mother’s handwriting, a tent and one bottle with a green sparkling liquid that Donald tells him to keep “Just in case”. Just in case of what he doesn’t specify. It feels vaguely ominous, even if the duck does seem to be warming up to him the more chests Sora leads them to.

The dog, Goofy, seems to like him from the start. He mentions that they’re looking for their king, and Sora asks why his soulmate isn’t the one looking.

“She’s the Queen!” Donald tells him, scandalized. “She’s busy!”

There are stories of kings and queens of old giving up their thrones entirely for their soulmates, stories of laws changing and revolutions sparking because two people were destined for each other. Maybe soulmates don’t trump everything on other worlds. He wonders if his soulmate is from a world like that. 

It would probably be a faster search though. She would know if she was getting close.

Sora tells them about the chests and the games he played with his friends years ago. He tells them of fixing some of the chests as he grew older and other kids started to play with them. Kids weren’t careful and the damp caves were hard on the chests.

Goofy smiles at him and says, “It sounds like you love the islands.”

“I do. I always have.”

He tilts his head in confusion as he looks at Sora. “Why do you want to come with us then?”

“My soulmate is out there, and I have to find them,” he says, and both of them blink at him.

“How are you sure they’re out there?” Donald asks, and it’s probably the friendliest he’s been thus far, even if it’s more lacking hostility than actually friendly.

“Sometimes you just know. My charm is colder than anyone I've ever met, so they have to be further than anyone else’s soulmate. I have to find them. They’ll be amazing, and they might think… They probably think I’m dead,” he says, and the words feel wrong on his tongue, but that’s the assumption that Kairi made when she felt his charm. It’s only reasonable to assume his soulmate believes it. 

He looks away from the two.

There’s silence for a while as he leads them into the cave where another chest is.

He’s leaning down to open the chest when Donald loudly says, “Fine!” Sora jumps.

“What?”

“You can come with us,” Donald tells him, and it feels like fate when he opens the chest and Donald declares it the right piece. 

It's odd taking his little boat back to his house to gather his things while the other two fix the ship knowing that he may never see the islands again.

His parents are romantics. He thinks they'll understand. 

His mother is at work, but he wakes his dad and tells him that he's going to find his soulmate. He tells him he's going to the stars, and his father smiles at him and asks him if he needs help packing. 

He writes a note to his friends to tell them he wants them to be happy, and that's he's chasing his own happiness.

His dad hugs him and then tells him, "The sky will always make us think of you, and now the stars will too."

He comes back to the play island and boards the ship while Donald says they've been waiting. Goofy shakes his head as they buckle in, so Sora doesn't really take the duck at his word.

He watches his islands fade away and he hopes he can come back one day.

He loves his friends and family, he loves his islands, but that won't hold him here. Going away won't stop that sort of love.

Goofy tells him that the next world they'd like to check isn't too far. He tells him that there's something going on, that they think the King disappeared to help. He tells him that the worlds aren't as safe as they once were, that the King may be looking for something. 

Most of all, he tells him to stay on the ship. Donald looks at him steadily when Goofy says that, but it’s different than his earlier stares. Less condescending, more considering.


	2. Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sora learns that the strangers he's with have their own agenda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which a subplot takes over for a bit.

He had had an expectation that the flight would be quiet. The vacuum of space was supposed to make everything quiet.

Instead, Donald and Goofy have given him access to part of the weapons system and explain that part of the reason for the crash was because they had been hit. 

"Hit by what?"

"Shadows," Donald replies. Sora gives him a questioning look, because shadows don't hit _anything_ in his experience, and Donald turns his back to him. "They'll get thicker for a bit, but they congregate around worlds. This trip is a short one, so expect them the entire flight."

It's not really an explanation, but nothing else is forthcoming.

There's nothing to see outside the glass, but the weapons systems came equipped with a detector that showed the location of the shadows around them. It’s not very precise, but Sora is a better shot than he was expecting. He focuses on his target area and he feels which parts are _wrong_ , even as they look the same as the parts around them.

Space is remarkably loud when you’re continuously shooting into the void. 

“That was the smoothest flight we’ve had since the simulators,” Donald comments while he pilots them down around two hours later.

“You’re a natural,” Goofy adds.

Sora clutches at his charm and ducks his head, a smile growing on his face.

He's never been a natural at anything. 

He's been the kid with the dead soulmate, the hyperactive kid who can't pay attention in school with his mind stuck on the impossible. He has tried so hard to be good at things that he never quite grasped, things that slipped away from him despite his efforts.

Right now though, he’s the gunner in a spaceship, and he’s _good_ at it.

He’s always wanted to go to the stars. Even without his soulmate, he thinks he would have wanted to see the stars. Maybe it's where he’s meant to be.

He had told his friends he was chasing happiness. He’s starting to catch it.

“They’re not here,” he tells them once the ship is down, because his charm is warmer but still cool. It's the sort of difference that Sora wouldn't have caught except that he's intimately familiar with his charm and its chill. It’s heartening though, because that slight change in temperature means he was _right_. Maybe his soulmate noticed it too. 

Goofy is setting up a computer analysis, something about the way the King moves through worlds being distinctive. 

Donald is staring at him. 

“We’ll keep trying,” Goofy assures him as he sits back from the computer, the program displaying a loading bar.

Donald is still staring. 

“Here,” he says, and a spark appears in his hand. “You’ll have to practice to get any good at it.” 

Sora isn’t sure what that means, but Donald doesn’t wait for him to understand. He huffs and then grabs Sora’s hand and shoves the spark at him.

Sora almost expects it to hurt, but it just warms his palm before sinking beneath his skin and then he _knows_ instinctually what it was.

Goofy looks surprised, even as Donald says softly, “I knew it. He’ll help us find the King.”

“Of course I will!” Sora says, because he was sure that was part of the deal. 

Goofy mutters something too low for Sora to quite make out but seems to be along the lines of, “Or the King will find us,” which doesn’t make any sense. He’s pretty sure he misheard, and Goofy won’t repeat himself. “You really are a natural,” is what he says instead, with a hint of wonder.

The computer dings after a while, and Goofy looks at the data it pulls up. Sora isn’t entirely sure what the numbers mean. Some of them look sort of like coordinates, but he doesn’t know a lot about that. The computer is folded and stored in the satchel Goofy is carrying before he can make sense of any of it regardless.

Goofy certainly seems to know what it all means though, because they disembark and he hits a button on the ship which closes it to the elements and then begins leading the way through the jungle around them, consulting his watch every so often. 

Sora has never been in a jungle, but he finds he likes it. The sound of waves that he’s accustomed to isn’t there, but there’s wind and animals calling out and the crunch of their footsteps as they walk. The trees stretch high above them, the sun peeking through the leaves, and the area is a lush green that the islands were too well-maintained to ever achieve. 

There’s no clear path through it all, and the trees and bushes are thick enough that it’s hard to see more than a few dozen feet ahead. The sunlight is weaker than the islands, and there’s a light fog that’s hovering over the ground. 

Everything is going remarkably well until Sora starts seeing shadows out of the corner of his eye. Moving shadows. He glances around, but he’s not sure if it’s just one of those world warping things that Donald had mentioned or something to actually be concerned about. Were they the same shadows that had tried to attack the ship or something normal on other worlds?

“You see those too, right?”

They both look back at him, then at each other and give little shrugs. “See what?” Goofy asks, and a shadow slithers a few feet behind him.

“The shadows. They’re moving,” Sora explains and hopes that it isn’t one of those things that considered so obvious it doesn’t require an explanation for world hopping travelers.

He’s gratified by the immediate alarm of his two companions.

“We can search in another area if those shadows are here,” Goofy says, even as Donald swings his staff to hold it like a torch.

Donald sends a bolt of lightning at the next shadow to move, disintegrating it. 

“The King was definitely here. We can’t give up,” Donald says. “We’ll just be fast.”

Goofy looks at his watch again and frowns. He leads the way after a few moments, shield in front of him as he goes.

Sora finds that certainty curious. He wonders if the shadows have anything to do with why they’re so sure their King has been there or if it’s something in the data he didn’t understand. 

Goofy comes to a stop and tells them he’ll need a few minutes, already pulling out the computer again. Donald rolls his eyes as Sora glances around. “Fire works just as well as lightning, you know,” is the bit of advice he gives before the shadows begin to converge on them again.

Fire does indeed work as well as lightning, Sora discovers, and it’s easy to manipulate. It’s instinctual to call on the flames Donald gifted him and it immediately occurs to him that if he gives it enough power, he can guide the flame through a crowd of shadows and disperse them all. 

He watches the first shadows dispel into smoke with a sense of pride for a moment before he has to repeat the performance. The shadows seem to be coming in larger numbers the longer they linger. 

Donald looks smug as Goofy packs up a few minutes later, sending out a wave of ice that temporarily halts the approach of the shadows. “I knew you could do it. Firaga on your first cast.” Goofy glances at him then but he just latches the satchel and tells them he can chart their course on the ship.

They move quickly back, but it’s not fast enough to avoid the shadows that block their path. Goofy leads with his shield, battering them out of the way, and there is decidedly more running on the way back to the ship than there was on the first trip. 

Sora hits the button that Goofy had to fold the ship because he’s the fastest of the three and is gratified that the ship opens before him. The shadows do not follow them onto the ship. Sora collapses into his seat and catches his breath as Goofy sets up the computer once more. He’s quite diligent with his work, even though Sora can see that the dog needs to catch his breath as well. He hunches over the computer and begins to work regardless, alternating between reading and typing. 

“Are we safe in here?” Sora asks, because if it’s been long enough to stop panting, it’s certainly been long enough for the shadows to catch up to them. Their trip back to the ship had certainly proved that. Outside the ship’s viewing pane, he sees no movement beyond the wind catching in the trees around them. The fog is lifting, the sun growing stronger. 

“It’s a gummi ship. Made of protective materials that both help prevent the world inhabitants from noticing it and keep the darkness out,” Donald explains, sounding more out of breath than Sora. “It’s helping to contain our energy too, so they might not even be able to find us. It just doesn't work as well when you're the only thing around in space.”

“Is that what the shadows are? The darkness?” Sora suddenly feels as though he should have asked more questions before hopping on a spaceship with two strangers, but he couldn’t have let them leave him behind when this was his chance.

Donald nods. “The King went out to find a solution to the problem. Someone corrupted the crystal that protected us from the darkness, though no one really knows how. There’s only one way to fix it and there’s no known magic users that can do it.”

“Well, how do you fix it?” Sora asks. 

“Purify the energy without getting swallowed by the darkness,” he answers and he’s staring Sora dead in the eyes as he does so. It sends a shiver down Sora’s spine, though he couldn’t say why. 

“So, that’s hard?”

Donald looks considering, tilting his head slightly. “Impossible for most. We haven’t known a magician who could do it since the crystal was created. The spell itself is just as easy as any other. It’s the person casting it that has to have to be able to fight the darkness in themself and win.” 

“The darkness in themself?” All Sora can picture is the shadows outside taking up residence in his head.

“The darkness is born from the darkest parts of people, their fear, their anger. It’s why the shadows always come back. It’s why the crystal is so important. Some people can harness the darkness, but it’s tricky and it can swallow them instead. The crystal helps save those people too. It can’t do that while damaged though, which means the King left to try to resolve this as quickly as we can.” Sora leans back into his chair. “Every heart holds darkness. It’s a rare one that can overcome that and purify another source as well. Most people have their hands full containing their own darkness in that situation.”

“How do you find someone like that then?”

Donald looks smug again. “There are signs.”

Goofy cuts in, pausing in his typing and showing he had been listening the entire time. “Your charm tells you you had to explore the worlds, but you didn’t really have to. You never had to leave your islands. Fate just gave you a nudge in that direction and you did the rest yourself. The King is like that. Fate gave him a kingdom and he protects it.”

“Why don’t you just try to find someone who can do it instead of trying to track down the King?” Sora asks. “He would notice if the crystal was fixed, right?”

They both look at him like he’s grown a second head.

“You really are a natural,” Donald says.

“You really think-?” Goofy asks.

“Of course. He’s perfect for it,” Donald responds, and Sora feels like he missed half of the conversation.

“Perfect for what?” he asks.

Donald still looks smug as he responds, “Fixing the crystal, of course.”

Sora takes in Goofy’s more hesitant expression. 

“What?! You just said-”

“I know what I said.” Donald cuts him off with an impatient wing flap. “I also know you can do this, and then the King will come investigate the crystal and we can focus on finding your soulmate.”

Sora is pretty sure he doesn’t really have another option. 

Goofy opens and shuts his mouth twice before saying, “I don’t know a lot about the magic side of all this, but if Donald says you can do it, then I know you can.”

And, well, Sora has never been able to deny someone help.

The flight itself fills Sora with nerves even as Donald explains that there are people who will give him the spell, who act as guardians of the crystal, and that it will be just as simple as the fire spell. 

Once they get far enough from the world, Goofy sets up several alarms and tells Sora that it will be safe to sleep for a while, until they’re close to the next world. 

Sora wakes in his sleep more than once, with the nightmares slipping away before he properly rouses and then he slips back into sleep once more. He wakes for the final time to Goofy and Donald having a quiet conversation.

“-think so?”

“If you had ever bothered to learn magic, you’d know.”

“The spells never did quite stick with me.”

“Well, they do with him. He’ll do it.”

They descend into silence until Sora opens his eyes to find Goofy looking at him as Donald begins ripping open packages for their breakfast. Goofy is smiling, so Sora offers a smile back. It feels wrong with the anxiety churning in his gut, like a facsimile of the real thing, but Goofy either doesn’t notice or doesn’t comment on it. He turns back to the computer. 

It’s a smooth flight, but the compliments that Goofy offers don’t warm him like they did the first time. 

He thinks being scared of the situation probably isn’t helping. Donald had said that fear feeds the darkness, which really doesn’t seem fair, but does make him feel like he’s a lot more likely to fail. 

He almost doesn’t notice his charm getting warmer.

Almost.

He’s on this adventure for precisely that reason, after all. His charm is finally warmer than he remembers Kairi’s being, which means he’s at least on the right planet.

He gave his word that he would try though, which means that the crystal comes first.

There’s a moment where he panics not for himself, but for his soulmate, for the person whose charm could suddenly grow cold after he is finally so _close_.

He never asked what could happen if he failed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed that chapter total changing from a definite 4 to 7 to unknown. This is because the original ending I had in mind had a plot thread hanging that was driving me wild that I then wrote an alternate ending for. The story sort of shifted focus a bit too much for my tastes though, so I'm editing out bits to make a possible side story focusing on FFVII (mainly Crisis Core) characters. This story is mostly done aside from some reworking of the last chapters and some editing, and I'm planning on having it all uploaded in the next few weeks. 
> 
> For you, this really just means that this story will stay focused on Sora and eventually his relationship with Riku. It also means that there could be a side story focusing on some other characters.


	3. Flower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy cow, this chapter was so tough to write. Riku next chapter though! Also, figured out that plot issue I was having earlier, so there will likely be no side story. 
> 
> I hope everyone is doing alright and doing the whole social distancing thing. It's tough on us all; here's hoping that this helps a little.

The landing is more organized than their previous, with Goofy communicating with a crew planetside giving them directions on where to land. There are other crafts, each seemingly made of similar materials to the ship they’re on despite being different designs entirely. They’re bright splashes of color against the monochromatic landing area, done in shades of grey. Some of them look like they’ve never heard of the word aerodynamic. 

They leave the ship and most of their things behind. “Better to do it quick,” Goofy says. “People have been worried.”

They don’t seem worried as the three of them pass through. Sora is almost astonished at how many people are there. On the islands, he would maybe have encountered one person on a road at a time. Instead, buildings spire above them, taller than the trees of the jungle they had left behind and people, both humanoid and not, spill forth from them. A gentleman with a sword strapped to his side bumps into Sora and gives him a wave and an apology as Sora looks around, continuing on with his group of similarly equipped people.

No one ever wore a sword on the islands.

Donald must have noticed his gaze, because he says, “They don’t usually carry weapons, but this world is a central hub for travelers. It attracts the darkness more than most.”

The comment somewhat dampens Sora’s curiosity.

The buildings before them look much the same as the buildings behind them to Sora, so he trusts that Donald and Goofy know where they’re going. He’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to find his way back to the ship at this point. He doesn’t know if that will matter.

He clutches at his charm, feels its warmth against his hand, and he finally understands why everyone in his class clutched at their charms all the time. He had never developed the habit and had never had it broken, never been gently scolded for the childish act.

Still, some reflex has him clutch his charm. It’s a comfort.

They round a corner and a black stone building unlike any of the others he’s seen is before them. It’s a large square, taking up most of the block, and all the more intimidating for it. It lacks windows and seemingly ornamentation as well until they get closer and Sora realizes that there are symbols carved into and around the massive double doors. They don’t look like the script he learned in school, but that’s all he can tell. 

There’s a single man dressed in black outside the doors. The sword he carries is more than a little intimidating, seeing as it is almost as tall and broad as the man himself, including the spikes of blond hair. He has a pauldron and sleeve on one arm, but gloves on both hands. He looks ready for a fight, and the sharpness of his gaze does nothing to dismiss that notion. The man’s face is neutral as they approach and doesn’t seem to change at all when Goofy says, “Hey Cloud.”

“Donald. Goofy.” Cloud’s eyes rest on Sora for a moment before he looks away. “Found the King yet?”

“Not yet. Brought Sora to see what he can do for the crystal,” Donald responds.

Cloud’s gaze is much more intense when he’s not being immediately dismissed. He simply takes Sora in, and Sora realizes that the blue of his eyes is accompanied by an internal glow. It’s almost eerie. “Sora, huh. Let’s mosey.”

Cloud knocks on the doors, which is about when Sora realizes they lack handles. The doors swing open to reveal another man, with a smaller blade but a scar running across his face. This man does smile a little when he catches sight of Goofy and Donald. “News of the King?” are the first words out of his mouth. 

“Nothing yet,” Cloud says. “Bringing them to Aerith.”

The new man’s eyes zero in on Sora. It’s discomfiting. He raises an eyebrow. “Think the kid can fix it?” Sora would be more offended by the disbelieving tone if he thought he could do it himself.

“Only one way to find out,” Donald says, but it sounds like a challenge. 

“I guess so,” he replies. “I’ll take over for Cloud then. He’ll take you to Aerith.” 

Cloud nods and begins making his way further into the entry hall. There are a few others there, mainly in shades of black that seem to blend in with the walls, but he walks by them without a word.

The man sighs. “As talkative as ever.”

“See you, Leon!” Goofy says as they follow after Cloud.

A sense of unease grips Sora as he steps past the doorway. It’s the same wariness that he had in the forest before the shadows fully formed. He glances around, but there’s no shadows lurking here, just people in black clothing, all armed and giving him curious glances.

“Good luck, kid,” Leon says and another man goes to close the door as soon as Leon steps outside. He catches Sora’s attention for a second longer than anyone else has, silver hair in choppy layers, but that’s all he sees before Donald calls, “Sora,” and he realizes that Cloud has not stopped walking at all. He jogs a little to catch up before Cloud exits the room through one of several corridors.

The black of the walls is broken by orbs of blue-ish white light that hang in the air. Their footsteps echo a bit, but the sounds from the entrance hall cut rather abruptly in a way that doesn’t feel natural. It feels like he could get lost forever in this building and no one would know.

It’s a short walk to the room, and this one has a door with a handle. Cloud opens it and walks in without knocking, and Sora is astonished to find flowers blooming all around the room. He walks up to one without thinking and mutters, “But they get no sun,” as he gently touches a petal.

“You don’t think Cloud’s sunny enough?” a bright voice asks from behind him, and he turns to see what seems to be the only person dressed in color in this place. She’s wearing a pink dress, with ribbons in her hair and a cheerful air. 

“What?” he and Cloud say at the same time. 

Donald doesn’t care. “Miss Aerith, teach Sora the spell.”

Aerith smiles and approaches Sora. Her eyes aren’t as intimidating as Cloud’s when she looks him up and down, but there’s something that makes Sora think that she’s learning more about him than he is about her. She gives him a little nod, her smile not abating. 

“Do you like flowers?” she asks.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

She giggles. “I hope so.” She turns to the plants and hums, hand on her chin. She grabs a sprig that has white flowers that look almost like bells. “Lily of the valley, perfect for you.” She tucks the stem into his shirt pocket. Then, a spark lights in her palm, no different from the one Donald had given him. “You came, despite your fears,” she says, clasping one of Sora’s hands, “and that’s all that matters.” It’s the only comment that’s made him feel better about any of this. Then she presses the spark into his palm.

It sinks into his skin and it feels like being on the play island in the light of a sunrise, like being a gunner in a spaceship, like watching the stars with his friends, like every happy moment he’s ever had. 

He smiles at Aerith. 

“You have something to do, Sora,” Aerith tells him with a sparkle in her eyes. “Cloud can bring you back for more flowers soon. Don’t worry about his grumpy face, he likes you!”

Sora glances at Cloud’s impassive face then back to Aerith. 

“Dilly-dally, shilly-shally,” she says, a string of nonsense words which make Cloud get off the wall he was lounging on and open the door again, heading out without a word. Aerith tilts her head toward the door, so Sora follows. Donald and Goofy fall in behind him.

It’s a longer walk than the one to Aerith’s room, with more turns and identical halls. Sora’s pretty sure he could find his way out from Aerith’s room, but he’s certain he would be lost for ages trying to find his way out from the room Cloud leads them to. 

It’s a domed room, the walls sloping around them. The walls have those runes etched into them, and in the middle is the crystal. It’s a cloudy yellow and even the sight of it doesn’t sit well with Sora. There’s just an immediate sense that something is wrong that’s unnerving, even though nothing seems to be happening. This is what had been making him so anxious in the compound, and being in the room with it isn’t helping.

There are two women in black in the room, and one of them, seemingly the younger one, waves excitedly at them. Cloud nods back and then looks back at Sora, as if to say ‘ _Well, do your thing._ ’ 

Sora approaches the crystal and ignores the feeling in his gut that is telling him he needs to _run_ , run now, get out of here, something terrible is here. He knows the source, after all. He’s here to fix it.

He places his hand on the crystal. 

There’s a part of him that expected it to be cold, but it’s room temperature, almost humming. 

He casts the spell, and then he’s not aware of the room at all. 

He feels the loneliness after Kairi touched his charm, where they didn’t speak at all for days which felt like weeks as a child, which he had almost forgotten. The bitterness in never _really_ being able to participate in soulmate conversations, because what if Kairi was right or what if he was right and he’d never meet them? The feelings of inadequacy from failed tests, the envy he’d felt of his parents’ easy hopefulness for him, the grief of when Kairi lost her parents, the heartbreak of his _one_ chance about to leave the planet without him.

It’s all the moments where he’s been lost and confused and helpless, and it’s a tidal wave dragging him out to a depth he’s never been to drown him because he won’t have enough strength to reach the shore. 

It’s all the moments when the stars have been out of reach coalesced into one feeling and maybe he wasn’t meant to be among the stars at all.

Maybe he is just the kid who asks for too much and he’s finally gone too far.

Maybe they chose the wrong person.

For a moment, that’s all he knows.

There's a flicker in his head.

That's... not how it went. That's not the ending or the beginning or the middle of any of those moments.

He’s never just been the dark moments of his life. He feels the burn of his soulmate charm around his neck, anchoring him to what is real, to what’s around him. The crystal hums under his hand, a tone just off key from where he knows it should be.

He thinks of studying for physics tests that he ended up failing, but his mother sitting with him as he did. Neither of them were very good at it, but she tried to help him, re-teaching herself things she had forgotten years before. He thinks of his parents, who never doubted him when he said his soulmate was out there, even though they had to have felt his charm when he was too young to remember. He thinks of his father’s easy acceptance that he needed to leave. 

He thinks of the paopu fruit that Kairi gave him as a peace offering when they were young, with a promise that even if he never found his soulmate, they would grow up together. He thinks of bringing her to the cave on the play island after her parents died and drawing the paopu fruit together on the walls, because Kairi had always loved art. She cried as she drew, smudging chalk on her face but never smudging the drawing.

He thinks of his friends, who let him share legends of soulmates and gave him the same enthusiasm that their speculations met. They watched the stars and shared their hopes about their soulmates, and Sora shared the stories he knew, about the soulmates who ended up engraved in stars, about the soulmates who met tragic ends and glorious ones. They never once asked him to share about his soulmate. They never once asked him to be anyone other than himself.

He’s here. He refuses to be beaten now. 

He wills the crystal to right itself.

It pushes back, the feeling of malevolence raising its head and baring its fangs at him, but he knows what’s real, what’s himself and what’s the crystal. 

He grips his charm with his left hand and thinks of the feeling that had swept through him when he was given the spell, that light, unburdened happiness.

He feels the crystal give, the wrongness slowly receding, until his entire world is _light_ and it’s almost too much, but why would he ever want to leave this feeling?

It’s like waking up. One moment, the world is golden, the next moment, he’s back in the room, with the crystal shining blue and himself locked out.

It’s a loss, but not a painful one. He’s felt like that before, so he’ll feel like that again. He’s hopeful yet. It’s hard not to be when his thoughts are full of his friends and family and when he’s so close to finding his once-impossible soulmate. 

“Huh,” he says. He can feel tear tracks drying on his face, even if he’s not sure when they got there. Sora’s always been prone to tears.

“Sora?” Donald asks, with a hesitance uncharacteristic of him. 

Sora removes his hand from the crystal and turns around. For all that the end of the spell felt like waking up, the world itself feels almost dream-like at the moment. There’s something tugging at his senses, but he can’t focus enough to figure out what. “Yeah?”

“We thought we had lost you there for a second,” Goofy says.

Sora thinks about the moment before he remembered himself and then ignores the impulse to say, “You almost did.” Instead, what comes out is a hoarse, “It was golden.”

“Seems like you need rest,” Cloud tells him.

“Kid’s earned it!” says the younger woman in black. “I didn’t even want to be in the same room as the crystal for months, but now it’s glowing just fine!”

“Kid,” Cloud says, with a scoff.

“He’s definitely younger than me!” she says, and Sora isn’t quite sure that’s true, but he doesn’t think he wants to get involved.

Cloud nods at the two again. “Take care of yourself, Cloud,” says the older woman. Cloud ducks his head, a little guiltily, and leads the three of them back out, leaving the two women behind. 

There’s still something though, a wrongness in the building that the feel of the crystal had overpowered before. Now that he knows how it feels, it’s almost impossible to ignore. 

Someone would have mentioned if there was another problem.

Right?

They leave him in a room furnished with a bed and not much else. He puts his flower on the edge of the bed and hopes he doesn’t crush it in his sleep. He’s tired enough that he’s willing to take the chance.

He sinks easily into a dreamless sleep, even as he hears the other three leave the room.

When he wakes, someone is there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which we can tell I really like FFVII characters. If the remake doesn't include the phrase "Let's mosey", we riot at dawn
> 
> The Lily of the Valley Aerith gave to Sora is supposed to symbolize 'purity of heart', among other things


	4. Favor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Riku arrives and more information about the crystal becomes relevant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHERE'S MY BOY? 
> 
> Here he is, Riku finally shows up properly

Some of his things have been brought to the room, but his attention is commanded by the man seated on a chair that also had to have been brought in. He’s leaning back with his eyes closed, arms crossed over his chest.

It’s the silver-haired man who had caught his attention before. He’s gorgeous, with an angular face that looks like it’s been carved with care. He has his own blade, seemingly modeled after a bat’s wing. By all rights, Sora feels like it should be intimidating, finding an armed stranger upon waking, but Sora is just happy.

It’s like something has clicked in his head, and he just _knows_. This is him. This is who he’s been looking for. The warmth of his charm on his chest is a confirmation he doesn’t truly need. 

Sora sits up and the man’s eyes snap open. His eyes are an icy blue that vaguely reminds Sora of the crystal.

“You know, I thought you were dead,” is what the man starts with. “Then my charm started getting warmer and you walked right by me. I’m almost offended. Then you went to sleep after coming all this way.” He doesn’t sound offended. He sounds more amused than anything. “I guess I had to do some of the work.”

“I knew you were out there. I came for you,” Sora says, because even if his soulmate isn’t offended, it’s true.

The man softens. “There’s a lot going on right now, and, honestly, I really don’t like that your friends brought you here in the middle of it, but I’m glad you’re _here_ , Sora. I’m Riku.”

Sora tilts his head. “I was always going to end up here if I went looking for you. If it really is so rare to find someone who could fix the crystal, then I was going to try. Everything was going to lead us here anyway, so I’m just happy it worked out.”

Riku buries his face in his hands with a groan. “Oh god, you’re so _nice_ ,” he mutters. He looks up at Sora. “Why do you have such terrible friends?”

“... Donald and Goofy?” Riku nods. “They picked me up on my world when their ship crashed. They were going to help me find you after they found the King, but it turned into fixing the crystal. I met them yesterday? Maybe two days ago?” He’s not sure how long he’s slept. Riku makes a pained noise. “They’re pretty nice!” he says, a little defensively. 

“Please, just… Stop. I cannot deal with-” He cuts himself off with a deep breath, in then out. “Are you hungry?”

Sora is in fact hungry. It just hadn’t been the first thing on his mind when meeting his soulmate.

“Right. We can’t go outside the building right now, but someone can bring us some food from outside. Are you craving anything in particular?”

“Fruit.” Sora is usually craving fruit. It featured in most of the meals he ate and his parents made jokes that it was a good thing they lived on an island.

Riku smiles. “Perfect, I know just the thing.” He stands and, just before he opens the door, there’s a knock. His smile drops, replaced by a confused wariness as he hesitates, hands on the handle. 

“It’s me,” says a voice that Sora doesn’t recognize. His soulmate evidently does, because he opens the door, even as he plants himself directly in the doorway, back to Sora. 

Sora stands, pushing the covers down the bed, so he can see beyond Riku. The man there has the same glowing eyes that Cloud does except they’re a bright green and slitted. He has long, silver hair and a long blade to match. 

He’s just as hard to read as Cloud. 

The stranger looks between the two of them for a moment before focusing on Sora. “Angeal’s found Genesis. He’s asking for your help.”

Sora doesn’t exactly get a chance to ask who either of those people are before his soulmate crosses his arms. “You want to risk him again? After what he’s done, after what _Genesis_ has done, you want to let-”

“Genesis will be lost forever otherwise. We have no one else. I’ll retrieve your food.” The stranger turns, his long jacket twirling behind him as he walks away.

His soulmate stands in the door, one hand poised to close it, the other clenched by his side. Sora walks over and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“That eavesdropping--!” There was a moment, and then he sighed and shut the door. His tone as he continued was serious, verging on anger that softened as he looked at Sora’s face. “I knew what I signed up for. They just dragged you into this and keep expecting more from you. Did they even tell you how the crystal was corrupted?”

Sora shakes his head. It doesn’t seem to be a good time to tell him that he’s pretty sure they had told him they didn’t know. Maybe it was a secret, maybe it was a lie, maybe it was the truth, but he thinks he knows which Riku will take it as at the moment. There’s something volatile about him, something fractious.

“Genesis was one of the guardians,” he begins. “He had been off world for months and when he came back, there was something wrong. We didn’t know immediately. Most of us can’t sense the darkness very well, but Angeal, his soulmate, was guarding the crystal. He knew, he knew the moment he saw him and he called for backup, but Genesis corrupted him, and then the crystal, and then they both turned on us when we came to help.”

Riku looks away, something like shame crossing his face. “Genesis is a powerful mage and a skilled fighter in turn, and all he needed was to just _push_ a bit of darkness for most of us to be overcome. Aerith helped some of us, the ones who she could, but we’ve been able to help the rest since you fixed the crystal. And now, they want you to try and help Genesis, because he’ll just corrupt the crystal again if given a chance. I promise you though, they can find another solution.”

“How long will that take?” He may not know Genesis, but he knows the feeling of the darkness being in your head. The crystal had been corrupted for a few months already, which meant that Genesis had been living like that for even longer, and there hadn’t been another solution in all that time. He already knows his answer. 

Riku grimaces. “I don’t know.”

“Then, I have to help. If it led me here, it can’t be that bad of an instinct, right?” Sora grins, giving a little shrug. 

“...I guess you wouldn’t be my soulmate if you were the type to cut and run.” There’s a boyish smile on his face as he looks back at Sora, one hand brushing his hair away. “You know, I just found out that you exist, and I want to protect you, but I’m getting the feeling that that’s not how this is going to go.”

“I don’t want you to protect me,” Sora tells him. His entire life has been people being gentle and kind, because that’s how things are on the islands, where the biggest thing to happen in years was the shipwreck that took Kairi’s parents. If he had needed to be sheltered and protected, then he wouldn’t have needed to come this far. He didn’t dream of the stars just for his soulmate. He dreamed of adventure and love and belonging. He wants it all. “I just want you to stay by my side.”

Riku blinks at him. “I can do that,” he says slowly. He flicks his gaze to the side. “Just… tell me when you know what else you want.”

Sora has an idea already. He’s never mapped out that conversation with his soulmate, never thought about what type of soulmate he was going to have. He’s always been a romantic at heart though, knows what he wants.

He’s well-versed in stories. He’s been told the tragedies that occur between soulmates.

He hasn’t come all this way to live in a tragic story.

He’s the boy who asked to go to the stars, asked for Kairi’s parents back, asked for his soulmate to find him and maybe he didn’t get everything he asked for, but he knows he’s never received the things he wanted and never asked for. He knows the asking is only part of it. Why stop asking now?

“I want everything you’re willing to give me,” Sora says, because it’s true. He wants anything and everything Riku will give him until he knows in his core why _Riku_ is the one he came this far for. He’s been chasing his soulmate for years, been yearning for the stars for as long as he remembers, knowing that he was meant to find something worth everything at the end. It’s all been so he can be with the person in the universe who will help him feel at home among the stars, so far from anything else he knows. He thinks if the universe has sent him so far, then it’s because this is the person who he needs and is needed by in return. 

Honesty, in the face of that, is easy. 

He watches Riku go red then give a sharp nod. “Then you’ll have it,” he says quickly, the sort of promise that Sora has been waiting years to hear.

The knock and subsequent opening of the door stalls any further conversation.

The stranger from before is back, bearing a shopping bag that he promptly hands to Riku. Riku is already glaring the moment the man steps in. “He’ll help, but he needs to eat first.”

“I understand.” The stranger positions himself in the corner and begins staring Sora down. It reminds him of the cats on the island, the ones who roamed freely, curiosity and wariness entangling in one look.

Riku sighs. “That wasn’t an invitation,” he says, but he brings the bag and sits down cross-legged on the bed before unpacking it. 

It is all fruits that Sora has never seen. He wonders if the fruits native to his island even exist on this world. It hadn’t seemed like the sort of thing that would change, but thinking it over means that Sora feels a little ridiculous for expecting familiar foods. 

Even the new fruits aren’t enough to allow Sora to just ignore the man still staring. 

“I’m Sora,” he says, before picking up one of the purple fruits before him.

The stranger frowns slightly. Sora bites into the fruit, a more tart flavor than he was expecting but still good. He waits. “Sephiroth,” the stranger says shortly, seeming more confused than annoyed.

“Thanks for the food, Sephiroth.” 

Sephiroth tilts his head, almost childlike if not for how calculating his eyes seem. “Consider it a thank you for Angeal.”

Angeal, the corrupted soulmate and Sephiroth’s… friend? Lover? Someone, certainly. Sora isn’t entirely certain how he helped Angeal, but he thinks that’s probably something to ask Riku later.

“You’ll be buying him a nice dinner for helping Genesis too then?” Riku asks sarcastically. 

Sephiroth nods seriously. “If he would like.”

Sora fights the urge to giggle. Sephiroth cuts an intimidating figure, but he feels more like one of the children on the island, blunt to the point of being impolite and ever so earnest.

It’s a very quiet meal, and nothing tastes exactly how he expects it to, but Sephiroth waits in silence and Riku eats very little. It feels like a calm before the storm, and the two of them being so tense isn’t helping. 

“Where is he?” Sora asks, as he’s picking at his last fruit. He’s not particularly hungry anymore. 

“Genesis is at his home. Angeal has the situation under control for now.”

Sora wonders if it was on purpose that Genesis had retreated to his home or if it had been a subconscious way to allow himself to be found. 

“Then, we should go,” he says, a little faintly. 

He’s never been the sort of person people depend on like this. Genesis and Angeal are just names in a story to him, but he’s the only available option to help one of those strangers. There’s a part of him that doesn’t feel like any of this is real, but it’s overwhelmed by the part of him that needs this all to be real.

He would wake up crying if this was all a dream. 

Maybe he never has been the type to be depended on, but he thinks he could grow into it. He thinks if he gets to keep everything else, the weird fruits, the magic, his soulmate, that he could learn to live like this. 

He thinks this is what the universe is offering to him, and he would be a fool to turn it down.

“I’m coming with you when you go,” Riku says, even as he cleans the bed, depositing everything back into the bag. 

“You wouldn’t be _my_ soulmate if you were the type to get left behind,” Sora says, with more confidence than he was feeling a moment ago. Something about Riku makes him feel like the two of them can conquer the universe. 

Riku scoffs. “I just found out you existed, I’m not going to fall behind now. I can definitely keep up with you.”

He likes that easy confidence. He likes everything Riku has shown him so far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're looking at one to three more chapters, depending on how everything plays out.
> 
> I feel like I rushed a little with how easily Sora likes Riku and vice versa, but I feel like Sora would jump right in, and Riku is sort of intense sometimes regardless.


	5. Mending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Accidentally uploaded the wrong version of the chapter before, so sorry if y'all got hit with double upload notifications. I edited this one really quick so that y'all wouldn't just get a deadlink email. Let me know if I missed any typos or if a line doesn't make sense. Some of them have been carried between drafts, so it happens.

Riku tucks the flower Aerith had given him into his shirt pocket before they go. “It suits you,” he says, turning away with a slight blush.

Sephiroth leads. He assures them that Angeal can handle Genesis for now, but he doesn’t offer anything further.

“He’s always like this,” Riku mutters. “He’s actually gotten better at communication since he had a fight with Genesis a few years ago.”

The closer they get, the more Sora is certain they’re going the right way. Riku grabs at his hand when he begins to slow.

The crystal’s aura had been mostly contained in its room. This is less intense, but it’s hard to ignore the voice in his head telling him to run, this is dangerous, _something_ is here. He focuses on Riku’s hand instead, laces their fingers together. Riku glances at him, a small smile playing at his lips. “Keep up,” he says, but it’s light, laced with humor. 

It doesn’t seem like Riku or Sephiroth have the same voice in their head. Maybe it’s part of being a guardian? The people milling on the streets don’t seem to notice it either though. Sora can’t imagine missing it.

The neighborhood they arrive in is more colorful, murals decorating some walls and the buildings are finally a reasonable height, even if many are still taller than the ones Sora is familiar with.

The building that Genesis must be in is a one story, light tan house. Sephiroth doesn’t bother knocking.

There’s more people than he was expecting there. He’s guessing the unconscious man is Genesis, but there are two brunettes and Cloud as well. 

The room itself had probably been lovely at some point, but the evidence of a fight is hard to miss. A coffee table lies shattered, it’s glass sprayed across the room, a deep groove carved into the floor next to it. One of the walls has a sizable dent, and Sora thinks there may have been some attempt at a garden, but it’s hard to tell from the smashed pots and scattered dirt. Pictures have been knocked down or askew and the four men are in varying states of disarray. There's a bookcase that's astonishingly pristine given the circumstances.

“Sephiroth, Riku, Sora,” Cloud greets with a nod. 

“His hair is almost more spiky than yours, Spike,” says one of the brunettes as he bounds up to them. Sora doesn’t really feel like this guy is allowed to say anything about spiky hair. His eyes glow a light blue, but he’s the first with glowing eyes to be so cheerful. “Good to see you, Riku! I got to say, with all the rumors going around about you, Sora, I sort of thought you would be younger? Yuffie’s been telling everyone about the kid that fixed the crystal and-”

“Zack,” says both Sephiroth and the other brunette. They exchange a look and the brunette continues, “You can make friends later.”

“Right,” Zack says, backing off a few steps.

The other brunette was probably Angeal. The man looked a little worse for wear even before the fight he must have helped in. His hair was lank and a small frown was the only expression he had. His eyes glowed as well, and he carried a sword as big as Cloud’s. The man nods at him. “You have my thanks, regardless of the result.”

Zack flings an arm around him. “Why would you even say that? Genesis will be fine, look at this kid!” He gestures with his other arm to Sora, as if to prove his point.

Sora feels a little unimpressive.

He steps to Genesis.

It’s easy to see something is wrong with the man. It looks like the color has leached out of him, leaving white hair and translucent skin. He’s gaunt and his clothes have fallen into a state of disrepair. How much of the tearing was the fight is difficult to say, but Genesis doesn’t appear to be wounded at all. 

Sora kneels and studies the peaceful expression on his face even as his mind blares alarms at him. He grabs the man’s hand, takes a deep breath and casts.

The crystal had been more passive. Certainly, the darkness had almost overwhelmed him, but it had seemed more a natural consequence of poking at it than anything else.

Genesis shoves the darkness at him, an attack almost overwhelming in its suddenness, except it’s not _Sora’s_ darkness that it latches onto this time. His own stays firmly where it should with a force of will, but Genesis keeps pushing until something gives and then the world is pain and loneliness of a suffocating kind. Sora knows what it's like to feel alone in a crowd, but this is a bone deep thing, where there's truly no one around who cares.

It’s not him but he’s alone, he’s alone, he’s alone, and no one’s here to _help him_ . There was supposed to be someone to help and he’s been left alone, he’s so _tired_ of being alone. He was _promised_ but he’s alone now so something must have happened and that promise was broken. Was there ever a promise?

His entire body hurts, an ache with no specific origin; he thinks he might be shaking. 

There’s a part of him that stands apart from it all and he retreats into it, gathering himself. He isn’t submerged; he’s still floating even as the ocean crashes violently around him. 

Sora isn’t alone here, which means neither is Genesis. The entire thing is a confusing rush of emotions, of ‘been alone, been abandoned, it hurts’ but it’s easier to work through than his own had been.

There’s light somewhere here, he just has to find it. 

Genesis had been a guardian before all this, will probably be one after it all too. He feeds that in, a little of his own hopefulness to coax out Genesis’s light. 

The pain and loneliness don’t recede. _‘The arrow has left the bow of the goddess,’_ floats through his mind. Sora isn’t one for poetic speech, but that one’s easy.

 _‘It’s not too late,_ ’ he feeds back. ‘ _Angeal is waiting.’_

That doesn’t quite garner the response he wants. The loneliness intensifies, even as the pain recedes. He’s not sure if that’s a step forward or not. _‘No honor.’_

He _really_ doesn’t know what that means. What does honor have to do with anything? Obviously, it’s important to Genesis, but that doesn’t help Sora. Does Genesis have no honor? Does Angeal? He doesn’t think he’ll get anywhere like this though. He thinks back to the crystal, the things that had helped him, and he tries again.

‘ _Your friends are here. They’re waiting for you to wake up_.’ He pushes an image of the men around them and it gives him the glimmer of light he needs. He feeds some of his own into it, guiding it out and then it’s like it’s taken flight. He nudges darkness out of the way where it struggles, but the light spreads out and the loneliness fades as it does.

Genesis does not become light like the crystal did. There’s darkness lingering at the edges, but his light doesn’t even approach those parts. Darkness in every heart, Donald had said, so Sora leaves it be. The pain is the last thing to fade. When things feel settled and the light has stopped its sweeping charge, Sora takes a breath and allows the spell to fade away.

It’s less jarring this time when he’s not being kicked out, but Riku puts a hand on his shoulder almost immediately. “You really are something,” he says, but he’s not looking at Sora. He’s looking at Genesis, who suddenly looks different.

Genesis is a red-head, apparently. Some color has returned to his face as well. He’s still too thin and his clothes are still ragged, but he looks more like someone who’s been away from home far too long than someone wasting away from disease. 

He’s still unconscious though. 

“You’re sure you’re done?” Angeal asks. He’s gone tenser than before, something hungry in his gaze as he looks at Genesis.

Sora nods.

“Cloud, please,” he says, and Sora can’t see Cloud from his position, but he must do something, because Genesis stirs. His glowing eyes blink open to see Sora first. He frowns at him, so Sora frowns back in an exaggerated fashion that Genesis blinks at. He’s not frowning anymore though.

There’s a sharp intellect in his eyes as he catalogues the room. “Nothing shall forestall my return,” is what he says, but Angeal lets out a breath and kneels next to his friend, so that’s probably fine. “What- The crystal?”

“Purified. But how did _you_ get to that state?”

“I was hurt,” Genesis snarls, suddenly furious, “and then he said he would _help_ , but it was the same as when we were kids. That _bastard_ , I’ll find him and-”

“There will be time for that, Gen, but you need to see Aerith. You’ve spent months corrupted, and we’ve only just managed to start containing the situation.”

“Don’t worry, Genesis. I can always start without you,” Sephiroth adds, and Angeal gives him a sharp look. Cloud puts a hand on Sephiroth’s shoulder.

“The kids?” he asks, and Sephiroth nods before turning to them.

“Thank you for your assistance. We’ll see you later, Riku.”

“You owe Sora dinner, I’m going to make sure you pay up,” he says before he tilts his head toward the door to Sora and starts off. Sora follows, waving.

“Take care of my son,” Sephiroth says in the last moment before the door swings shut, which makes Sora blink in surprise, but Riku is still walking.

Huh. He can kind of see it.

There’s a mounting excitement in Sora’s chest, overwhelming the tiredness brought on from the spellwork. He’s… He’s _here_. With his not-dead soulmate, among the stars. Things have settled in a way that means he just might be able to have everything he’s ever wanted. He can have the things that he never even thought to ask for. 

“I’m going to love it here,” Sora says and Riku’s eyes snap back to him.

He looks startled, enough to stop walking. “You’re going to stay?”

Sora doesn’t know how to tell Riku that he feels settled in his skin in a way he didn’t know was possible, that he’s dreamed of adventure and love all his life, and then it was handed to him neatly wrapped together. He doesn’t know the words to tell Riku that he’s always wanted to leave the islands, not because of a lack of love but an excess of it. The islands were a gentle place and Sora had been vibrating out of his skin, because he wasn’t built for a quiet life and he had stayed for love and left for the same reason.

“I’m going to stay,” is all he can say at the moment. One day, he’ll tell Riku all of it, when he knows the words that will sink into Riku’s heart and let him know that Sora’s loved ones always understood he wasn’t meant to be kept anywhere, that he was going to go to his soulmate one day and they had understood that he hadn’t abandoned them. He wasn’t meant for the islands, but he thinks Riku has roots here. A world that’s a hub for world-hopping travelers seems like a good place for Sora to put some roots too. 

Riku lets out a huff of air. “When they told me you came from off-world, I thought… You don’t have to choose to be here just because I’m here. I don’t want you to feel like-”

“Yeah, no,” Sora says, cutting him off, because Riku is looking guilty about it. “I’m choosing for my own reasons. Sure, you’re part of it, but I’m not going to make my life _about_ you.”

Riku’s silent for a moment. “I’m glad.” He lets out a deep breath. “I genuinely thought you were dead. I don’t know what to do now that you’re here.”

“Well,” Sora says, drawing the word out. “I’ve always wanted to explore another world.”

Riku glances sideways at him. He looks back at the building they’re leaving behind. “I can do better than that mess then.” Noticing Sora hasn’t moved yet, he offers a hand. “Coming?”

“So, where are we going?” he asks, taking his hand and watching a smile blossom on Riku’s face. Gods, he’s stunning; Sora isn’t entirely sure how he ended up with such a pretty soulmate, but he likes the crinkles near his eyes and how he could see Riku’s shoulders relax the moment he took his hand.

Riku tugs a little at his hand. “C’mon, we don’t have all day.”

“I sort of do,” Sora tells him, and Riku gives a huff of a laugh as he begins to lead. 

“Not for long. People are always looking for a capable magician, and you’re the one who fixed the crystal. You’ll have plenty to do if you want to.”

They stop for a snack, another sweet Sora doesn't recognize. 

Riku’s… sort of quiet, honestly. He’s obviously interested in listening, nodding and asking questions and giving Sora probably the most undivided attention he’s ever received in his life.

It takes Sora about twice as long as it does Riku to finish his food.

“-and when we finally got to the play island again, the fireworks had already gotten wet.”

“What’d you do instead then?”

Sora ducks his head. “Told stories about the stars,” he says, because he had. It was just that his friends had told stories about their soulmates. It feels more like nostalgia than longing looking back now. “We did that a lot of nights, just stargazing on the beach of the play island. My parents had told me so many stories about the stars,” about love written in the stars, about destinies and grand fates and tragedy, “that we never really ran out of things to say.”

“The stars, huh?” Riku asks with a slightly distant look in his eyes before he nods to himself. “Got somewhere you might like then.”

Riku leads him through the streets, and Sora feels almost like a child clinging to his hand. The feeling is alleviated by the soft smiles Riku occasionally throws his way.

He understands the sentiment. He had always known meeting his soulmate would be a joyous moment, but he thinks he would be thrilled to know Riku even if soulmates didn’t exist. 

Knowing that he gets to keep Riku? 

His heart feels like it’s going to burst from joy.

“There’s no beaches around here, really, but we can go stargazing,” Riku says as they reach a building labeled as an observatory. There’s a few people milling about, but the streets are starting to empty as the day goes on. 

“I’ve never been to one,” Sora tells him, because the only observatory he had known of was on the mainland, hours from his islands. “I’m glad I’m coming with you,” Sora adds, because he loves the stars but a part of that has always been about his soulmate. 

Riku blushes. He blushes pretty easily honestly, porcelain skin flushing quickly. “Let’s just get inside.”

The planetarium is like nothing Sora’s ever seen. A spaceship was something almost familiar with how often he had dreamed of them, but he grabs Riku’s hand and drags him through with mounting excitement. The planets themselves are different than those he’s familiar with, but it doesn’t matter. Riku fills him in on the basics, and Sora is surprised how much Riku considers the basics. “My dad used to take me here as a kid,” Riku offers as explanation. “Said that our destinies were all written in the sky.”

“He was sort of right,” Sora shoots back.

Riku looks back at him with a soft grin. “Maybe he was.”

When Riku’s knowledge runs dry, he gets an audio guide for Sora. It captures Sora’s attention for a while before he realizes that he’s lost track of Riku. Almost as soon as the thought occurs to him, he spots Riku entering the room.

Riku smiles when he spots Sora before beckoning him over from the doorway. “Took you long enough. Come on.” He leads him to the room with the telescope, the equipment towering over them both. There’s no one else in the domed room, and Sora has a vague memory of a uniformed lady standing next to the telescope earlier. He doesn’t have much time to think on it, as Riku prompts, “Look through it.”

Sora does. It’s a nearby planet based on how much detail he can make out, which is an interesting thing to focus this sort of equipment on when they could just visit. The atmosphere is streaks of white and blue, and it’s just like how he imagined-

“It’s your islands,” Riku says and Sora breathes out. “I asked a favor of the employees.”

He whirls around and gathers Riku in his arms, because he’s filled to bursting with happiness so it’s either this or crying, and crying still isn’t that distant a possibility. Riku hugs him back. “Thank you.”

Riku tightens his arms a little and ducks his head, his breath ruffling Sora’s hair, and he quietly says, “Maybe it’s selfish, but I want you to choose here.”

Riku’s arms don’t loosen, but it doesn’t seem like this is the sort of conversation Riku can have face to face yet. Sora tightens his own grip for a moment. “I’m not losing anything, so it’s not selfish,” he says and Riku loosens his arms to look Sora in the eyes, hands framing Sora’s waist. “My parents never doubted I had someone out there, so we always knew I would leave.”

“I’m sorry,” Riku says, and Sora thinks that maybe Riku just feels guilty about things. “I really did think you were dead, that I was going to be alone, but you’re _here_ , and somehow you’re _mine_. The only thing I knew was that you’re from off-planet, and I’ve been trying to rearrange my life to keep you, and you’re just… staying.”

Sora thinks Riku’s being a bit dumb, if sweet. “We have time to figure out the details, Riku. Besides, I don’t think anyone thought I was going to come back once I found you. If you were as far as you ended up being, with my planet’s technology, that’s a one-way trip.” 

Riku frowns at him.

“Then why-?”

Sora laughs, because only his parents had ever really gotten it. “My charm told me that my destiny wasn’t where I was, and I wanted to find something that would... Well, I was either going to find someone or not, but I always felt like I needed to go.”

Because that’s the secret Sora didn’t like facing. It was easy to focus on the stars and his soulmate and wrapping them up into each other, but there had always been a part of him that knew if he had left the planet and his charm had stayed cold, had told him there was no one out there for him to find, had told him that his whole reason for wanting to leave was moot, then he still would have left.

“So, you were always going to end up here,” Riku says, and it takes Sora a moment to realize he's echoing Sora's words. “You… are way too trusting.”

Sora laughs, bright and loud, and Riku’s hands tighten, a brand on his waist and his brain just goes ' _oh_ '. He peers up, butterflies in his stomach, laughter petering off. Then he puts his hands on Riku’s shoulders, pushing down just a little, feels Riku’s hands pull him closer and Riku’s lips are warm.

It’s like the crystal but the opposite, his world narrowing down to a single feeling, crystalizing into an unfettered joy, because things have worked out better than he had dreamed they could ever since he learned what his charm had meant.

He doesn’t know Riku, not really, not yet, but he doesn’t need to, because his soulmate exists and seems just as happy about that fact as Sora does.

The kiss itself is short, more a pressing of lips than anything, but it tells Sora that he and Riku at least want similar things from this, that they’re willing to try and see what they can make together, and that’s more than enough to go on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that's a wrap! There's definitely more going on with our FFVII gang, but this is the end of Sora's character arc. Honestly, Donald and Goofy had larger roles during the planning phase and then they kept getting bumped out by FFVII characters.
> 
> I thought it would be really cute for them to go to the observatory because I feel like I wrapped Sora's character around an obsession with the stars and getting out there, so him getting to share that with Riku is a fun idea to me. Also, Sephiroth trying to be nice to his adopted son and just busting out dramatic lines like destinies being written in the sky in the middle of their trip to the observatory is ridiculously funny to me.


End file.
